When I started this blog, the name Ashes to Beauty was chosen because I wanted to encourage others struggling with things happening in their lives.  Daily, we see our friends post on social media all the “good” things happening in their lives and think they have a perfect life… they never struggle, everything always goes good for them, while we struggle through daily life hoping for a ray of sunshine to break through the dark clouds that overshadow us.

I have walked through valleys and deserts and dark places in my journey.   My life has been tough, and I’ve fallen a few times.  But recently I read a post that stated, “Tell the story of the mountain you climbed.  Your words could become the pages in someone else’s survival guide.”  If people only see the good in my life, they wouldn’t be seeing the whole picture.  It has been through the hard places that I have learned some of the most valued and treasured lessons.

My most recent struggle has been loneliness.  In a house with six people, how could I be lonely?  I am active in church and surrounded by people, and yet I have felt so alone, and the people around me don’t even know how I feel.

Several years ago, a word was spoken to my husband and I, that God would use us in ministry and what we did then would seem small to what we would be doing.  Back then, we were very active in ministry.  It seemed our home away from home was the church.  We participated in outreaches, music ministry, and anything we could put our hands to do.  It looked so big to us… how could that be considered small?

We didn’t know that this word would also bring some unexpected change.  A few years later we would leave our church home and the people we loved so much to start a new journey in a new church.  It was one of the hardest steps we ever took – and one of the loneliest steps.  Over night we went from knowing everyone, to being the new kid on the block with all the uncertainty that comes with it.  Will they like us?  Will they accept us?   We were scared and uncertain, but we knew God had called us to this place, and He would walk with us on this journey.

You would think someone who moved around a lot as a child, would know the routine and be used to what would happen next.  It didn’t happen overnight.  We were getting to know the new people, but the friendships we had had for years were slowly fading.  I had to learn a very hard lesson – not everyone who is a part of your life, can journey with you in new seasons.

As I grow more in the place I am now planted, and as I walk in more of what God has called me to do, I am learning that ministry is a lonely place.  Sure, you have some friends, but the journey you are on requires you to be cautious with who you share with.  The friends you once held so dear, are on a different journey, and you just don’t share the same experiences anymore.  If you tell people the dream God has given you, the calling He has placed on your life, they may think you are boasting and prideful.  Why would God give that to you?  Who do you think you are?   You might even find yourself in a pit.  Remember Joseph?  God gave him dreams about his future.  He saw his brothers bowing down to him.  How dare he?  Who does he think he is?  Do you hear his brothers asking, “Why would we ever bow down to him, he is our younger brother?”  It didn’t help that he was dad’s favorite and was given a special robe.  Soon they dreaded hearing his dreams.  They would see him coming, and start grumbling.  They began to plot against him.

Joseph wasn’t bragging, he just wanted someone to talk to, to share in his joy along his journey.  But instead his brothers bound him and threw him in a pit.  They were done.  They had to get him to stop talking about his dreams.  Some of his brothers wanted to kill him, and as they were devising the plan, a slave caravan came by.  This would get him out of their hair.  They sold him as a slave and he would be taken far from them.

Little did they know they had just set Joseph on the very path that would bring them to bowing before him, just as he saw in his dreams.  For some reason our human nature always wants to promote ourselves.  We do not like to see another person succeed and reach their dreams.  If they reach their dreams, then I look like a failure.  Instead of coming along side and helping each other, we become like crabs in a bucket.

Ok, I didn’t know I was going here.  My husband likes to give people this scenario….

You are a crab in a bucket.  If you are in the bucket alone, you can climb out.  But if there are more crabs in the bucket with you, when you try to climb out, the others will pull you back down.  How do you get out of the bucket?

One of my favorite answers to his question is…  Help everyone else out of the bucket, and then climb out myself.  It makes sense, right?  But often that is the last thing we will do.  We have to succeed first, or no one does.  Instead of helping others reach their goals, we through them in a pit, or sell them to a caravan that will take them far away from us. We even cut them out of our lives, because if we don’t know they are succeeding we feel better about ourselves.

And then we get to Egypt and someone buys us.  We do everything we can to help our master become successful.  Everything seems to be going well.  The master leaves you in charge of his house while he goes on a trip, and trouble begins again.  You will not break the rules of your master’s house, and those who want you to do something against your master lie about you.  Who is the master going to believe, a member of his family, or a slave?  You are now cast into prison.

You have done nothing wrong.  Someone just doesn’t like that you have been placed in a position they think they should have.  What they don’t realize is that it is God who puts people in positions, and they feel passed up.  It is out of their thinking that they should have your position, the hurt, the anger, the jealousy… you are wrongly accused.   Until the truth can be found out, you may get cast out, and find yourself in a low and dark place.

Most of us would try to fight the accusation.  We would fight for our innocence; and when we are not released, we may grumble and complain how unfair it is.  We surely would not follow Joseph’s example.  Sure, at first, he probably felt sorry for himself.  What did he ever do to end up here?  His brothers sold him because they didn’t like his dreams.  His master put him in prison because someone lied.  But Joseph took a different approach.  He made the best of the time in his prison.  He helped the jailer.  He befriended the other inmates.  I’m sure he questioned God many times for not getting him out of there.  When other prisoners were released, he could only hope his day would come.  He told others the meaning of their dreams, and he watched one by one, as their dreams came to pass.  Would his dream ever come to pass?  How long would he be in the prison, alone and forgotten?

Your family may cast you aside.  Your dearest and closest friends may move on.  People may tear you down because of your position, calling and anointing.  You may feel like you don’t have anyone on your side.  And you may begin to question what God is doing.  Why did He bring you to this place, this position?  Why would God bring me this far, but make me be alone?  Where are my friends?  Where are the people who have walked with me through other journeys in my life?

Scriptures say that God “will never leave us or forsake us.”  That when “my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.”  Job said’ “My kinfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.”

We are not the first ones to ever experience this loneliness.  During those times we feel like we have no one to turn to, we can be confident that God has not left us.  Sometimes the journey God has asked us to walk is purposed with drawing us closer to God.  We need to press in, learn more of Him, spend time building our relationship with our Father.  God wants us to depend more on Him than running to our friends and family for advice.  He said He would lead and direct us- if we are always looking to others to show us where to go, or what to say, we will not be doing the will of our Father.

Joseph’s time came when God brought him out of the prison, and what a position he had prepared for him.  The right hand of the king.  Everyone in the land had to follow what he said, and the only person higher was the king.  The journey had all been building up to this very moment.  If Joseph’s brother had killed him, he wouldn’t be there to save them from the famine all these years later.  If he was still a servant in the master’s house, he would have never met the servants of the king who were cast into prison.  If he had never told them the meanings of their dreams, the king would have never called on him to tell the meaning of his dream.  If he had never had a good reputation to his master and the jailer, why would anyone think he could manage the task of storing grain, and distribution when the time came.

I’m sure when Joseph looked back, he saw that every part of the journey was necessary to get him to the right place and the right time, so his family would be saved.  At the time, he could only wonder what was going on.  We don’t always understand the process, but if we will trust that God has it all planned to perfection, it will turn out better than we could ever imagine.  The lessons we learn, the friendships we make, and the things that we lose on the journey all have a purpose.   Instead of fighting it, instead of crying over the “spilled milk” moments, we just need to take it all in and wait for the beauty that will arise.  The process takes you places to knock off, or clean out, things in your life that you don’t need… the grumbling, the complaining, the hard heart, the pride, the jealousy… and God puts in you the things you need for the journey… compassion, grace, patience, kindness, and mercy.  The words that become the story of the mountain you climbed or the valley you walked through, when shared can become the words on the pages of someone else’s survival guide.

We are never to walk the journey and not share it with others.  Someone needs to know how you overcame your battle.  Someone needs to know how you made it out of the pit. That loneliness they feel, someone else came through it.  Someone needs to know that God works in our lives to bring us out of the ashes.

Yes, sometimes we have to go it alone.  But if we are spending time with God, and following His path, we will find that He sends us people to help along the way.  It may not be who we expected, but it will be the right person to help us to keep pressing on.

Out of the ashes we rise….